How many girls listen reverently to it?
They come from stores and shops, from high schools, offices, homes of
plenty and homes of want. They know temptation, they meet it in more
dangerous forms than ever before. How does the prayer affect life as
they know it? Very little I am bound to believe unless _the great
experience_ has come to them and they have said in simple girlish
fashion, "O Christ, I choose thee King of my life--I follow thee
wherever the way shall lead," unless that transferring of _will_ from
vague and indefinite desire to a definite purpose has come, the prayer
which is a part of the average opening service will have little
influence. Even if the great decision has been made, the prayer of one
far away at the desk, often out of touch with young life, does not bring
the uplift.
What a teacher may do the following testimony of a young girl may help
us to see:
"I never had any special instruction in prayer at home. I think I must
have said my prayers when a very little child. My parents are just fine
but they do not go to church. They almost always spend Sundays with
grandmother on the farm. I do not remember any instruction about prayer,
though of course it was mentioned and I knew good people prayed, until I
was seventeen when the finest teacher I ever had talked to us about it
for four Sundays.
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